A Dance of Chaos: Book 6 of Shadowdance (27 page)

Hardly any time passed before Muzien arrived, coming not from the wide, empty street but instead from atop the wall itself. With a flourish of his long coat, Muzien landed softly despite the great height, facing Thren from a mere twenty feet away. Unlike on their previous meetings, Thren felt confidence upon seeing his old master, and he made sure Muzien knew it.

“Glad to know you came alone,” he said. “I was worried you’d feel the need for an escort after yesterday’s humiliation.”

Muzien’s blue eyes burned with anger, but the elf kept his voice calm, his smile pleasant.

“Am I in need of protection?” he asked. “Certainly you are no threat to me.”

Thren chuckled.

“Proud, even to the end. You wanted me, Muzien, and now I’m here. Would you care to tell me why?”

The elf crossed his arms behind his back, and he tilted his head to one side, analyzing his former student.

“Despite having the entire city under my control, you still resist me,” he said. “Despite having failed at the task I sent you here to complete, you act as if you never failed at all. You confuse me, Thren, and the more I learn of you, and what you’ve done, the more confused I become. So here I am. I come to you as I should have when I first set foot in Veldaren: not with demands, nor condemnation, but merely questions.”

“A noble offer,” Thren said. “Though I wonder why I should give you even that. You have given me nothing but disrespect and insults, and only now that you’re losing do you come to talk.”

Muzien shook his head.

“Your ambush, outnumbering and surrounding me, still failed to kill me or crush my guild. Do not think you have won, Thren. You are still a nuisance, but one whose cost has become too great to ignore. I took as many lives as I lost yesterday, and I have far more lives to spare than you.”

Thren chuckled.

“Yes, you did handle our ambush masterfully. I saw what you did with those tiles of yours, by the way, sending in men with hammers just after Victor’s soldiers crossed over them. Very clever.”

Muzien’s face seemed to darken in the moonlight.

“So you are aware of the danger the tiles possess?”

Thren shrugged, deciding that was a game he no longer needed to play. Muzien had to know who was in control, to see whose hands truly held the fate of the city.

“Of course I am,” he said. “This is my city, not yours, remember?”

Muzien’s dark hand fell down to the hilt of one of his swords, then hesitated.

“I thought you must be the one,” he said. “The Watcher is too weak of a fool to destroy everything if he cannot save it, but you … you still have a shred of the willpower I once saw in you as a child. Did you play Luther against me, or were you merely his puppet as well?”

“Luther played us all,” Thren said, chuckling. “But I’d say you were played worse. I hold the key, Muzien. He gave it to me before I took his life. With but a whisper, I can bathe all of Veldaren with fire and destruction. You say you haven’t lost yet. I say otherwise. I’m the one holding all the power, not you. Right now, you’re just one of thousands who’d be caught in the blast.”

“Luther gave it to you,” he said. “Then you’ve had it from the moment you set foot into Veldaren … yet you never spoke a word. Why have you kept this a secret, Thren? Is your pride so great you hoped to defeat me without resorting to such threats?”

Thren clenched his jaw tight. That was an answer he could not give. At play here was not just the city, but also Thren’s own echoing legacy. If Muzien had left immediately upon Thren’s return, then things would have returned to the way they’d always been. But now the Watcher fought alongside him. Now the Watcher truly listened with open ears, and looked with open eyes. Sometimes fear and desperation were the best teachers.

“My reasons are my own,” Thren said. “Luther was a fool, and now his weapon is mine. It’s time you leave.”

The darkened hand clenched into a fist, and Muzien openly glared.

“This madness is beyond even your limits. What is it you truly want, Thren? Do you want to be my heir again, and take your place at my side? Do you wish to rule as you did before, or usurp the throne I have carved for myself the past few months? Tell me. Let me hear it from your own lips.”

Thren gestured north, to the distant gate through the city’s wall.

“I want you gone,” he said. “I will build a legacy for myself, and it will be free of your shadow. Go back to Mordeina. Either that, or stay, and burn with all the rest.”

Muzien drew a sword, but before he could take a step, Thren pulled the golden amulet marked by a roaring lion from beneath his shirt and held it beside his lips.

“One word,” he said, and he pointedly glanced to his left, where less than ten feet away was one of Muzien’s many tiles of the Sun. “One word, and we’re both dead. I’d suggest keeping your temper in check.”

The elf hesitated, then with another glare, he jammed the sword back into its scabbard.

“You still haven’t won,” he said. “This is merely a stalemate. For all your boasting, you won’t destroy the city and end your chance of ruling it.”

“I beg to differ,” Thren said. “If you stay, I will sunder the land. Better Veldaren as ash and dust than not in my hands, Muzien. I think that’s a sentiment you understand all too well. Your situation is hopeless. So unless you want to be annihilated, accept defeat, and get out of my city. There is no way you can win this, and a hundred ways you will lose.”

This was it, his final moment of victory. There was nothing Muzien could do to stop him. Every bit of power was in Thren’s hands. With but a word, the elf died. How could he possibly resist him now? The Sun Guild would retreat from Veldaren, and in its vacuum, Thren would rise up to fill the void. He looked to his former master, seeking that fear in his eyes, that defeat, but instead Muzien grinned like a madman and laughed in his face.

“Hopeless?” he asked. “Far, far from it. You have but one grand weapon, one you cannot wield with subtlety, nor precision. You have no middle ground, no repeated use. Your only threat is to destroy the city you seek to rule solely to spite me. I believe you’re insane enough to do it, but not like this. You want to play games, Thren? You want to dance? Then go ahead. Continue with your schemes. Take the city from me. Earn your place. Earn your legacy. The only thing you accomplish by using that amulet is admitting your failure. You haven’t won, Thren. You’ve only changed the rules of the game.”

Thren felt his confidence starting to crack. Muzien wasn’t afraid. Despite the danger, despite how with a single whisper, Thren could end all their lives … Muzien wasn’t afraid. The determination on his face, the disgust … Thren almost spoke the word, almost destroyed them all, just to see that glorious second of panic and terror in the elf’s eyes.

But the day before, they’d scored their first victory, and he’d done it fighting side by side with his son. No, there was still hope. There was still the rest of the game to be played.

“Why did you come here?” Thren asked, letting the amulet fall back beneath his shirt. “Why now? You don’t need the wealth, and you don’t need the reputation. You passed by two other nations on the way here, each worthy of your attention. Did you bring all your focus here to simply humiliate me? To show no disciple of yours shall ever surpass you? What brought you to my city, Muzien? What made you so determined to pry it from my hands?”

“Because you were my heir!” Muzien shouted. “I trained you, I molded you. Everything you are is because of my guiding hands. And then this … Watcher took it from you. Your thief war lasted for years, and every single day you failed to crush your foes, the weaker it made me look. How could I have you take over my empire if you cannot rule a single miserable city? You want to know why I am here, Thren? I am here to show that the greatest of humans is still nothing compared to me. I am here to erase whatever insult your existence has done to my name, all so I may start over. You are a failure of an heir, and in killing Grayson, you slew the only other man who might have been worthy. From the beginning, then, I must start. From this cesspool of miserable lives, from this wasteland that you call home, I will find another person worthy to succeed me, because the one thing I know more than anything else is that you are not worthy.”

The elf spit out those last words as if hurling them at a wretched beggar. For years Thren had hated Muzien, denied him, and still those words pierced his flesh like daggers.

“You were the closest thing I ever had to a father,” he whispered. “If I am unworthy, then it is by your own failure. You hypocrite. Would you take all credit for my successes, then cast me aside for my failures? As if that cleanses you? As if that hides your shame? You’re wrong. It only reinforces it. I’m going to kill you, Muzien. When you die, it’ll be because I rose above your teachings, surpassing every pinnacle you thought you’d perfected.”

The elf smirked.

“Feeble dreams of a pathetic man,” he said. “Cherish every breath you take, Thren. They’re numbered.”

Putting his back to him in mockery, showing how much of a threat he truly thought Thren to be, Muzien strolled down the street he still claimed to own. Thren watched him go, his temper boiling over.

“Ash!” he screamed after him. “I will leave you with ash and bone. This city will be your funeral pyre!”

Clutching the amulet, feeling its hard metal through his shirt, he almost gave in. A scar, he’d promised his son. He’d leave a scar upon the world that would never heal. Given the destruction he could unleash, the lives he would end, how deep might that scar run? Tighter and tighter he held it, feeling his hand beginning to shake. His guild was still in pieces, and despite all the power he wielded, his foe showed no fear. To his eyes the city was already ash and bone. What reason was there to go on?

Have hope
, he told himself through his rage.
It might be only a glimmer, but it is still there
.

“I’m not your heir,” he whispered, the calm of the night settling over him, soothing him. “I’m too old and tired to carry that mantle. But not my son.”

His son. Thren looked to the city, imagining the Watcher prowling the rooftops, remembering the awesome skill he’d displayed in battling Muzien. How different might things have been if Aaron had never fallen for the sweet lies of Ashhur? How great might his son have become if he’d chosen to rule the city instead of pretending to save it?

“How badly did I fail you?” he whispered aloud, a weight on his shoulders, a weight he’d felt for nine years, growing even heavier. “Are you too far gone?”

When he’d stood upon that hill not far from the Stronghold, commanding Haern to take his life, he’d thought all hope of reuniting his family lost to him. But something was different now. At long last, his son was seeing how cruel the world could be.

Throwing back his head and straightening his shoulders, Thren bore the weight as if it were not there. Mind to the future, he strode down the same street Muzien had walked, determined to show the same lack of fear. Muzien’s aura of invincibility was gone, the elf’s victory no longer inevitable. Time to gather the old guilds. From the ashes they’d rise, and loudly declare the underworld would suffer no gods. A king, though, they would accept a king, and for once Thren dared hope it would not be his head that bore the heavy crown.

   18   

T
errance stood at the door to the garden, hesitant to step outside, when Zusa found him.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

Terrance startled, then blushed at his reaction.

“I’m sorry,” he said, staring at the floor. “And no, nothing’s wrong. I have something Alyssa requested. Could … could you give this to her?”

He offered her a slender wooden box not much bigger than his hand. She took it, surprised by its weight given its small size.

“Thank you,” Terrance said, bowing low. “She’s been out there for hours, ever since the funeral. I had a servant ask her if she’d like to come in, since the sun was setting and it was getting dark. ‘It’s always dark for me,’ she said. I, uh, don’t think I’ve quite seen her like this before.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Zusa said. “Try not to worry. Alyssa’s strong. She’ll endure like she always has.”